Currently, many business associations in Da Nang are facing difficulties in promoting their trade activities.  

The Vice Chairman of the city’s Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) Association, Mr Nguyen Van Ly, said that his agency is facing a shortage of capital to organise trade promotion activities in order to help its members expand their consumer markets.

The Vice Chairman of the municipal Young Entrepreneurs Association, Mr Ha Duc Hung, affirmed that in recent years its members have had to take the initiative and use their internal resources to conduct trade promotion activities, instead of relying on their Association.

A local trade fair

He asked the city authorities to assist the Association’s member businesses in conducting more trade promotion activities with their partners elsewhere in the central region and highlands in the near future.

The Director of the city’s Trade Promotion Centre, Mr Hua Tu Anh, revealed that an annual fund of only 1 billion VND from the city’s budget is usually spent on the Centre-organised trade promotion activities.  He emphasised that this figure, for example, is only one-fifth of the annual cost of the trade promotion activities of the Hoa Tho Textiles and Garments company. 

He also explained that the 1 billion VND is also used to hold dozens of training courses, seminars, conferences, trade fairs and other promotion programmes at home and abroad.  In reality, these programmes have yet to attract a great deal of attention from local businesses due to their unimproved quality.

He remarked, “The Centre is now only able to organise trade promotion programmes in Laos and Thailand, whilst a number of local business people want to make trips to the USA, South Korea and Japan in order to learn about the investment environment in these countries”.

In a similar vein, the Deputy General Director of the Dong Nguyen Construction Materials company, Mrs Nguyen Thi Cam Van, hoped that the city authorities would facilitate her and other local businesspeople to visit other countries worldwide in order to learn more about their business environment and to seek cooperation opportunities with international partners.